Lee High School is the last defense of court-ordered desegregation in Huntsville.

Using theater and arts, Lee houses the only magnet program that successfully lures out-of-zone students to racially balance a neighborhood school. But if other schools offer the same theater and dance options, said Principal Harry Smith, the melting pot at Lee could vanish. Smith points to the growing competition in south Huntsville, where most students are white.

These days Huntsville High School mounts full-scale musicals. That didn't happen a few years ago. And Grissom High School has a professional-caliber dance instructor. She wasn't there seven years ago.

"All that's going on, and it shouldn't be," said Smith. "In my opinion, the (school) board should work to see that there are no competing programs."

Lee's magnet, created in 1986, is split between performing arts and pre-engineering. The arts include vocal music, creative writing, dance, drama, photography, visual arts and theater production. Pre-engineering includes in-depth math, technical writing, and business mentoring. That program is the city's best answer to a 33-year-old order to desegregate its school system.

Already, New Century Technology High School has drained the pre-engineering magnet at Lee, said Vivienne Atkins, who oversees Lee's various magnet programs.

New Century, which started with a handful of students in 1997, now draws 300 full-time high school students from all over Huntsville to classrooms at Calhoun Community College.

The high-tech studies overlap with pre-engineering, said Atkins. "We can't compete with New Century."

Some city leaders say you can't deny students at another school the chance to perform or receive top-notch instruction.

"The last thing I want to do is punish people for success," said Jennie Robinson, who represents south Huntsville on the school board.

Not all agree. Board member Topper Birney said the system should move the dance instructor from Grissom if space opens at Lee.

"I don't think other schools should be in competition with our magnets," said Birney.

If Lee is undermined, say some city leaders, the school and much of northeast Huntsville could resegregate.

Sustaining balance

Huntsville has five neighborhood high schools, each a pillar in its community. Lee is the most racially balanced.

Huntsville High in the center city is growing whiter. About 12 percent of students there are black, down from 22 percent five years ago.

Butler High to the west is going the other direction. Today, 65 percent of Butler students are black, up 10 percentage points in four years.

Grissom in south Huntsville is a predominantly white school and always has been. It has more Asian students than black. Johnson High in northwest Huntsville has been more than 90 percent black for six years.

At Lee, 58 percent of students are black; that's up 8 percentage points in five years. However, Lee is also the only school in Huntsville that is majority black and majority middle-class.

Atkins worries about sustaining that balance.

"The point is that we are supposed to be unique. We are the desegregation program for the whole city," said Atkins. "If you're not getting something unique, why leave your home school?"

Take Shelton Oakley. She considered going to Huntsville High in her neighborhood, same as both her brothers.

But Lee seemed more relaxed, she said. She danced and sang in middle school at the Academy for Academics and Arts. Oakley wanted to continue in high school. "There was the wonderful reputation of the magnet program at Lee," she said.

Lee's magnet draws talented students from across Huntsville. White students come north. Black students come south and east.

For four years, Oakley sang in the choral magnet, a double period every day. Magnet students attend regular high school classes the rest of the time at Lee.

She played soccer, participated in student government, earned a lead in "Showboat." Race was never a problem, she said.

"Lee is the best school," said Oakley this summer before leaving for Rhodes College. "It's the best kept secret in Huntsville."

Lee has 224 magnet students this year; 160 came from other schools * 47 from Butler, 47 from Grissom and 43 from Johnson. Only 23 transferred from Huntsville High, where plans for a new school include a new auditorium to showcase the annual musicals.

For a magnet to survive, the system needs one top drama program, said former school board member Ann Fee. She suggested moving the drama teacher from Huntsville High to Lee. Same goes for the dance instructor at Grissom. "Grissom just has everything," she said. "They are the top of the line. That really isn't healthy for the rest of the city."

Garage band magnet?

Johnson High also has a magnet program, which includes lessons in Japanese and Russian. That one never took off. Last year, all 51 magnet students at Johnson were already zoned for the school.

"Kids aren't going to travel long distances for foreign language," said school board President David Blair.

He said Johnson could experiment with a new magnet, maybe attach a small zoo and study life sciences. Or Johnson could focus on business and law, he said.

Any change would require a trip to federal court. Four magnets - two middle-school academies and the high school programs at Lee and Johnson - were created in federal court in the 1980s to desegregate the system after forced busing failed. A magnet must maintain a racial balance similar to the systemwide average, which was 43 percent black last year.

Asked the best example of desegregation in Huntsville, Superintendent Ann Roy Moore quickly named Lee.

Young white kids still travel north to attend the Academy for Academics and Arts and the Academy for Science and Foreign Language. But unlike Lee, neither academy integrates a normal neighborhood school.

Even ASFL has had trouble attracting white students lately, said Assistant Superintendent Mary Ruth Yates.

"Magnet schools, I think, run their course after awhile," she said. If a program works, other schools copy it. That's what's happening at Lee now.

To stay strong, Blair said, Lee must evolve. He suggested a garage band magnet, maybe a studio recording magnet.

"I just don't buy into taking things away from other schools," he said. Instead of pulling programs from other schools, for the first time the school board gave money to support them. The four magnets split $100,000 last school year.

Across the country, magnets remain the top desegregation agent in many systems. Many cities, such as New Haven, Conn., use magnets to draw whites from surrounding suburban school systems. In other areas, the quotas themselves have evolved.

In Wake County, N.C., racial quotas have been replaced by a race-blind system that integrates children based on family income. Riotous or relaxed?

Board member Doug Martinson Jr., who represents much of the area around Lee, doesn't worry about musicals across town.

"Lee's a strong school," he said. "It's got a strong principal there now." Board member James Dawson sees it differently. He blames Principal Smith, who is white, for racial strife. Lee needs a black principal, Dawson said. Last year, Smith replaced James Embry, who is black.

"If there is any school in this city that is sitting on the edge of a race riot, it's Lee," said Dawson.

In recent years, Lee has held center stage in a string of racially charged incidents.

A white teacher resigned after using the N-word in class. A student poem was censored for a line about slapping the white off someone's face. A white student was hospitalized after a fight blamed on racism. A black teacher quit during a public meeting, claiming racism among colleagues. But most of these situations predate Smith. And he talks about a different side of Lee.

"It is more of a relaxed atmosphere," he said. "The kids seem to be more open to each other and each other's ideas. There are relatively few serious discipline problems at Lee."

Others see Lee as a model for tolerance. "It's totally blended," said Oakley, who graduated in May. "Of course there are cliques, but it's by area of interest." It's not by money, not by race, she said.

"It's OK to be anybody at Lee," said Atkins, the magnet supervisor. "It's OK to play football, it's OK to be a cheerleader. But it's also OK to write poetry, act or run a spotlight."

Dick Hiatt, who represented east Huntsville on the City Council, said Lee's magnet is essential to the continuing success of the city. "Lee used to draw from the whole northeastern part of the city," said Hiatt. "Most people in the northeast are people whose kids are up and gone."

If Lee's magnet doesn't remain competitive, said Hiatt, it will quickly become difficult to draw young families. The property values would fall. That would hurt the tax base for the entire city.

Mostly, he worries about the magnet losing students to the drama program and $3.5 million auditorium being built down the road at the new Huntsville High.

"That's going to be better than the (Von Braun Center's) got," he said.